Left I on the News

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

More history lessons from Hugo Chavez

"It was 1916 when the North American empire had thrown itself on our America. At that time, sadly enough, the prophecy of Simon Bolivar came to pass, when he said, 100 years before, in 1818 or 1820, Simon Bolivar said, 'The United States of North America appear to be destined by Providence to spread misery and poverty throughout Latin America.' Simon Bolivar said that when one could only see the first signs of the North American empire."

"I referred to Pancho Villa. We need to say, as Eduardo Galleano wrote, remembering the fire of that episode when in 1916 Pancho Villa invaded the United States, but now all of us would be with him in that revolutionary group of cavalry, Galleano said about that day, 'On that day, the rain fell upward.' And I say today, 'The rain falls upward.' Why? Because we are turning the world on its head. We are showing that a new world can be born. We are seeing how the wind of change is blowing."

"Thomas Jefferson himself said, another of the founding fathers of that nation, Thomas Jefferson said very clearly, "The United States should swallow up one by one the republics born South of the Rio Grande." It was in 1823 that James Monroe said, "America for the Americans." And when I say this tonight, I say it because I want to remind you my brothers of Argentina, of Venezuela, and of America, that the presence of the President of the United States in South America represents all of that, he represents that Monroe Doctrine of 'America for the Americans.' Well, we will have to tell him, 'North America for the North Americans, and South America for the South Americans. This is our America.'"